Attempts to formulate proposals for international and national level legal regulations

practice. Defining the rules of conduct in professional and corporate life contributes to dignity and integrity in the practice of the profession of legal adviser.

It is therefore clear that the above rules provide for disciplinary liability for the creation, use, etc., of fake news within these corporations.

12. Attempts to formulate proposals for international

first, an online social network service, understood as an electronically-provided service that allows users to share any content with other users or the general public and is used by at least one million registered users in the country;

second, a service provider or the provider of online social network services consisting of the storage of user-provided information on the online social network at their request, with at least one million registered users;

third, a country representative, which is an individual or a body corporate with a place of residence or registered office in the territory of the Republic of Poland, having the exclusive right to represent the service provider in the territory of the Republic of Poland and to conduct internal audit and control procedures on its behalf;

fourth, a user, i.e., the service recipient and an individual, a body corporate, or an organizational unit without legal personality that uses the online social network service, even in the absence of a user profile;

fifth, a user profile, which is understood as settings comprising a social network service user’s working environment;

sixth, disinformation, which is false or misleading information produced, pre-sented, and disseminated for profit or violation of the public interest;

seventh, content of criminal nature, which is understood as content that praises or incites the commission of prohibited acts as specified under articles of the Criminal Code¹⁰⁷ or which meet the criteria of a prohibited act;

eighth, illegal content, which is content that violates personal rights, disinfor-mation, or content of a criminal nature, or content that violates morality, particularly by disseminating or praising violence, distress, or humiliation;

ninth, a limitation of access to content, which covers all acts and omissions taken in any form with a view to limiting access to content posted on an online social network service, including by deleting user-posted content that is not illegal content, or a limitation of access to content through the algorithms used by a service provider or tags that indicate possible violations in the pub-lished content;

tenth, a limitation of access to the user’s profile, which is removing or preventing access to the user’s profile, limiting or preventing the sharing of content on the user’s profile with other users, including through the algorithms used by the service provider, which limit the display of content posted by the user, or tags that indicate possible violations in the published content.

The most important body examining the reliability and truthfulness of infor-mation under this draft act is the Freedom of Speech Council. It will be a public administration body upholding social network services’ observance of the freedom of

107 These are Articles 117–119, 127–130, 133, 134–135, 137, 140, 148–150, 189–189a, 190a, 194–204, 222–224a, 249–251, 255–258 and 343 of the Criminal Code Act of 6 June 1997.

expression, the freedom to source and disseminate information, the freedom to express religious and philosophical views and beliefs, and the freedom of communication.

The Council would be composed of a chairman in the rank of a secretary of state and four members. As member of the Council, a person may be appointed who: 1) has only Polish citizenship and enjoys full public rights; 2) has full legal capacity;

3) has not been validly convicted for an intentional crime or an intentional fiscal crime; 4) in the period from 22 July 1944 to 31 July 1990, has not worked or served in state security bodies within the meaning of Article 2 of the Act of 18 October 2006 on disclosure of information on documents of state security bodies from the years 1944 to 1990 and the content of such documents (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 2141) and has not cooperated with these bodies; 5) has an unblemished repu-tation; 6) has a university degree in law or the necessary knowledge in the field of linguistics or new technologies. Further, a deputy of the Sejm, senator, member of the European Parliament, councilor, community head (mayor), deputy community head (deputy mayor), community secretary, community treasury officer, district board member, district secretary, district treasury officer, province board member, province treasury officer, or province secretary may not be appointed as a member of the Council. Council members’ term of office is six years. The chairman is appointed by the Sejm of the Republic of Poland by a 3/5 majority of votes with at least half of the statutory number of deputies attending. If, in the first vote concerning the appointment of the chairman, none of the candidates wins a 3/5 majority of votes, the vote is to be repeated, with the Sejm of the Republic of Poland appointing the chairman by a simple majority of votes.

The process of dealing with fake news is a staged procedure, where:

Stage 1 is the detection of information that meets the criteria of fake news, which has been disseminated via a specific social network service.

Stage 2 is the submission of a complaint to the service provider, specifying that a piece of information detected in the service is information that meets the criteria of fake news. The service has a time limit of 48 hours to consider the complaint.

Stage 3 is the response from the service that has disseminated the fake news.

When considering complaints, the service has two options: either it accepts the com-plaint and the procedure ends at this point, or it rejects the comcom-plaint, which war-rants the right to appeal the rejection decision before the Freedom of Speech Council, within a time limit of seven days. Thus, the fourth stage of the procedure opens.

Stage 4 is the activation of the Freedom of Speech Council, which, after receipt of the appeal, has a time limit of seven days to analyze it and decide. The Freedom of Speech Council may uphold the service’s decision and dismiss the appeal, or it may uphold the appeal and thus, under the force of the Council’s decision, have the content on the service rectified. Dismissing the appeal begins the fifth stage of the procedure, and accepting the appeal ends the procedure for the case.

Stage 5 is opened by the above-mentioned dismissal of the appeal and provides the option to bring a complaint to the Supreme Administrative Court¹⁰⁸ within a time limit of 30 days. In such a case, the interested parties become subject to the admin-istrative court procedure, while the application of the act on the protection of the freedoms of social network users ends.

It should also be noted that, based on the draft act, options are being analyzed for the introduction of a ‘name-blind civil action.’ In short, this provision would be construed so that a person whose personal rights are violated online by another un-identified person will be able to bring action for the protection of their rights without providing the respondent’s details. For action to be effectively brought before the court, it is sufficient to identify the URL where the offensive content was published, the date and time of publication, and the name of the user profile or login.

Currently, the act is at the draft stage, but the procedure laid down in it is the first and, so far, the only attempt to comprehensively regulate the issue of fake news, inter alia, in the Polish legal system.

108 The Polish legal system features administrative courts that administer justice through the control of the activities of public administration and the resolution of competence and jurisdiction dis-putes between the bodies of local government units, local government appeal boards, and Between these bodies and government administration bodies. Administrative courts comprise the Supreme Administrative Court and provincial administrative courts. Cases falling within the jurisdiction of administrative courts are examined in the first instance by provincial administrative courts.

The Supreme Administrative Court supervises the activity of provincial administrative courts as regards adjudication, in the manner specified by statutes. In particular, it examines appeals to these courts’ decisions and adopts resolutions clarifying legal issues. It also examines other cases within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Administrative Court under other acts. The legal basis for the or-ganization of the Supreme Administrative Court is the Act of 25 July 2002 – Law on the System of Administrative Courts.